Abstract
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title> <jats:p>Indonesia’s decentralization project sees village resilience as part of the national drive for a more “democratized governance.” For 20 years, the World Bank had helped Indonesia develop a series of national village development projects that transferred block grants directly to community-owned development accounts all across the country’s 76,000 villages. These projects had clean audits, high participation, compelling evaluations, and they built large amounts of economic infrastructure even in remote regions. In 2014, Indonesia attempted to move this model into the national budget, increasing the annual funding by nearly tenfold. However, good intentions to mainstream the model ran aground due to the political economy of how state systems engage local communities. This chapter shows the limits of evidence-based policy when “evidence” is defined in absolutes rather than as something mediated through political economy and institutions. Was the model always doomed, or was something missing that we can see in our other case studies? The Village Law presents a case of the weakness of a “wise technocrat” model because it shows how critical organizational and political variables are in successful social policy.</jats:p>